The present disclosure relates to an optical switch, and more particularly to an optical switch including a plurality of optical waveguides.
With the development of technology, products used in the optical and semiconductor industries are becoming lower-priced, miniaturized, integrated, lower-powered, and ultra-fast. Accordance to the trend of such an industry, the integration of optical elements such as a light source, an optical detector, an optical modulator, or an optical switch based on a semiconductor or a dielectric waveguide structure into a single chip is actively researched and developed. In order to implement such a single chip integration, the performance of each optical element should be good and also its performance should be maintained even when integrated with other elements into a single chip.
The optical switch has an optical line switching function and is important as an optical communication exchanger. The method of using the optical waveguide and switching the overall path of light has the advantages of high reliability and high speed. A general polymer total reflection type optical switch is provided with a heater installed at a central portion of optical waveguides that intersect with each other. The polymer total reflection type optical switch heats a portion of an optical waveguide through a heater. In this case, it has a structure in which the refractive index of an optical waveguide material changes due to a temperature change of the optical waveguide, thereby generating a total reflection phenomenon.